I've been exchanging email a bit with That Woman since she notified me of my great-aunt's death. She's pestering me for my married name and husband's name again, and I told her flat that because of her history I don't feel safe giving them to her.

She decided to respond with "What do you want me to say? I'm 55, both my parents died at 60, I have macular degeneration and a high school education and I'm just trying to make my way in the world as best I can."

Wow. Now I know where I got the "woe is poor little me" tendency. I'm glad I grew out of it (as much as I did, anyway). But that shit don't cut it with me, and she was pretty obviously trying to change the subject to her self-pity.

So I lit into her. Told her that she was trying to change the subject, that unless she's taken up smoking or her parents died of something other than the emphysema she told me she's got years yet. Told her that I distinctly remember her taking college courses and doing reasonably well in them, and there's nothing stopping her from going back. Asked her which type of MD it is (I suspect the sort that's often made worse by poor diet -- MD is apparently somewhat rare as young as 55 and there's no family history of it that I'm aware of). Pointed out that the last time I gave her any information she pestered a coworker on both his work and home emails. (She claims those emails were accidental. From her work account and "she didn't know what those buttons were!" Bullshit. I worked techsup, I'm familiar with the setup her office uses and that she's been using for as long as they've had it, and doing it twice blows even the most farfetched accidental theory out of the water.)

She's not going to like this. But you know what? I don't care. The "ooohhhhhh woe is me, mortality just hit me upside the head and I'm old and my body is failing" shit doesn't work with me. I'm young and my body is fux0red, mortality has stared me in the face more than once, and unless I somehow missed her smoking five packs a day for the last 30 years (which her parents did and I'm not exaggerating) she's not going to die in five years. Unless she manages to bust her stomach pouch completely open instead of just straining the staples.

I'm still, a year after finding out about it (when I was tracking her down via public message boards so my brain would stop screaming about her trying to contact me, which she sort of was), boggling over that one. How does one manage to gain back weight after a roux-en-Y? Much less 60 pounds? In two months? I don't think I could gain 60 pounds in two months if I actively tried. I get sick if I eat too large a piece of cake.

Had my Astronomy orientation today. I giggled through the entire thing.

It turns out that my professor used to work at my old facility, and he used to know Honcho.nasa. This course is going to be a sleeper for me except for the exams and projects, I can tell. The rest I'll most likely do in advance.

Math is going to be interesting; it's actually picking up exactly where I left off in high school. Unnerving, but I should be okay once I get back into the swing of things. The professor is very definitely a total and complete flake.

My English class, however... *twitch* Don't mind me, I'm going to be mindfucked for a semester and probably take a semester after that to come anywhere near equilibrium again. It starts off discussing family. Baaaaaad juju. The prof isn't going to like what comes from my direction, but it'll certainly liven up the required online chats.

My Astronomy lab prof (totally different guy) will be delighted to find that I'll make the first class on time after all; my math prof decided to schedule -two- orientations and we can pick the time. *grumble* Of course she didn't bother to tell us beforehand... I only found out when I logged into WebCT for her course, which no one was supposed/able to until today. Flake city. Pour milk on her and have breakfast.

With all of this, I'll be bloody well looking forward to my music class. Nice soothing music. Speaking of... *hooks up cd drive and pops in a class cd* Oh WOW, this is good stuff!!! I think I'll be using this class to calm down from English!

I did the last bits of prep to go back to school today. I went and got my graphing calculator :

As near verbatim as possible:
Me: *after searching the campus bookstore* Hi, where are the graphing calculators?
Bookstore Drone: They're *insert high-but-not-scarily-so price here*... uh...
Me: I'm aware of that. Where do you keep them?
BD: They're back here. Uh, it's *repeats price*!
Me: Riiiiight. Can I get one, please?
BD: *makes no move to get one* Uhhhh... what do you need it for? Do you need it?
Me: *boggle* *pause to see if he's joking* *boggle more* It would be rather useful in passing my math class, seeing as how it's required by the course...
BD: *finally goes to get calculator*
Me: Okay, great. *notices model number is slightly different than the one listed in the course requirement, just an upgrade, no biggie* These are the only ones you have? There are no other models?
BD: *does marvelous imitation of poleaxed cow on a bad LSD trip* There are some down there, the regular ones, you want those! *Note: Not a question.*
Me: Nonononono, I need the graphing calculator. *whips out credit card before BD's braincell stampedes out his nose*

Hard-won geek gadget firmly in hand, I troop over to the campus information desk. Two people and a lot of self-restraint and patient speaking later, I got the location of the department office my AWOL Astronomy lab professor reports to. I head up there and get a secretary who... *sigh* Well, she was a bit of an improvement over the others in the same way that leaving the bacon off a bacon double cheeseburger is a bit healthier. I eventually manage to get my needs (getting ahold of the damned prof so I can let him know I'm going to be late to the first lab) across to her, she calls him and wastes half his voicemail space slooooooowwwwly blathering about me having to miss class, then hands the phone over to me. I leave a concise message explaining my need to be LATE, the reason for the conflict, that it will be a one-time thing and giving him both my phone numbers, and we're good. Even if he never calls me back, he will be aware that I'm not cutting the first day of class. Assuming, of course, that he can figure out how to check his voicemail; he certainly can't figure out how to check his email.

And these are the people running the place. I tremble to think of the caliber of student. I imagine it must be legendary.

Why. On. Earth. Does every single frickin' bit of publicity, any sort of mention in the news, society, etcetera ALWAYS portray people with handicaps (wheelchair, deformities, etc) as bloody angels on earth? It seems the more impaired they are, the more saintly they're made out to be.

Fuck that. I've known too damned many perfectly "normal" people who WERE up for sainthood, and too many people with varying levels of physical and/or mental problems who were fucking assholes and worthless sacks of shit. "Vermin" comes to mind, a guy I went to college with. He used his physical problems (not sure what they were other than "noticeable") to get away with publicly groping anything attractive and female, and signed up for a Life Drawing class for the sole purpose of seeing "naked women". His mistake there was bragging about it (as usual), because I was the model for that class and reported it before classes started. I remember Chuck, a guy I dated for a while. Birth defects, wheelchair, spectacular artist, nice guy until I realized he was immature as hell and it would drive me batshit if we got engaged.

Two examples, out of the many that I've known -- for fuck's sake, spina bifida does not an angel come to earth make. Physical shells have NOTHING, fucking NOTHING, to do with whether someone's an asshole or a saint. I am sick and fucking tired of society assuming that because a teenager has foetal alcohol syndrome or leukemia that they are wonderful. They're people. That's it. Some take it better than others.

My great-aunt died yesterday morning of brain cancer.

Oooohhhh, Saturday morning the 29th is going to be interesting. I have two orientations that day for classes -- at the same time. One is mandatory, the other is "strongly recommended". Oh dear. I think I'm going to be getting in touch with my English prof to tell him/her that I can't make the orientation unless they want to fight it out with my Astronomy prof. *sigh* I should be okay; it's English, writing, basic freshman comp sort of thing. Basically, book reports. If the level of student is anything like what I saw in the hallowed *cough* halls while waiting for the advisor, I can probably do it touch-typing, blindfolded, without ever reading the book. (I winced when I heard one guy try to sound out "college" and wound up proudly saying "colleague!" to his girlfriend... who looked at him admiringly. Do they let them out totally illiterate these days?!)

Still, I suppose being a student now has its perks. I'm going semi-nocturnal again, mostly through insomnia. At least I have the luxury of doing that. I've already started to lose some of the weight I put on, and I have more energy. I think that office was draining me more than I was aware of, and I think taking classes will be a lot less problematic. I'm old enough now that I'm not going to be distracted by boys/girls/drugs/freedom/etc, and from the looks of things I'll have plenty of spare brain cycles. (If my competition can't figure out how to pronounce "college"... folks, if you can't pronounce it you probably shouldn't be attending it.)

Plus I'll have an excuse to go socialise -- there's a new club night starting up that looks absolutely delightful. Much dancing will occur. And it's not every week, which means I'll have time to recover after I go play in the pretty silly bouncy synthy music. (Dancing is a bit of a surround-sense activity for me.)

I should go investigate bed now. Meh. 5am rambles are always odd. And my touch-typing is getting worse. Must remember to wake up to chanting monks. I did today, and between that and the total pea-soup fog outside it started a pleasantly surreal day. Except for the assholes with leafblowers outside. You can't blow leaves in drizzly fog, it just doesn't work. I don't know why they were trying it unless it was to make noise. But I managed to get back to sleep to be awakened by the monks. I recommend that sort of thing. The monks, I mean.

*rereading that last bit* Ooooookay, time for bed.

Husband's finally home safe, relaxed some (I plunked him into a bubble bath because they fix everything, dammit) and fed (ribeye marinated with rosemary and lemongrass). I'll spend the weekend getting things into some sort of order and contact the Department of State on Monday.

Whee.